The Year's Most Innovative Security Technologies

An ASIS Accolades judge sizes up the newest building security technologies from 2009

By Michael Fickes

A new ASIS program – ASIS Accolades – recognizes the most innovative security products, services, and solutions each year. The association announced the winners of the first annual Accolades last September at its annual meeting.

Lander surveyed 2009’s 130 entries and selected several that building owners, building security directors, and property managers might find useful. Here, he sizes up the newest of those technologies.

A Surveillance System that Learns and AdaptsAISight, from Houston-based BRS Labs, illustrates the next step in video analytics: self-programming video analytics. Intelligent video software typically requires users to install a pre-programmed algorithm describing a behavior the system should scan for. AISight, however, applies artificial intelligence to video analytics and enables systems to identify and report unusual behavior without pre-programming. “A handful of companies are doing behavioral analytics that learn behavior,” Lander says. “This is a step forward for security technology.”

To learn more about AISight, check out this sound clip by clicking here.

Video Surveillance System that Teaches OfficersAnother take on video surveillance comes from Feeling Software of Montreal. Feeling Software’s Omnipresence 3D integrates surveillance video with 3D images of buildings. The 3D video provides situational awareness for officers – if something is happening simultaneously at the back door, the loading dock, and the IT system, Omnipresence communicates it to officers through video, audio, and textual alarms.

“This is human cognitive awareness,” Lander says. “The technology makes security officers aware of situations as they develop. In response, officers will do what they have been trained to do in addressing routine security problems or emergencies.”

Physical Security Information ManagementIntegrated technologies have produced a new term this year: Physical Security Information Management (PSIM). Think of PSIM this way: Last year, you used tools like network video recorders (NVRs) to acquire, store, access, and manage video surveillance data. This year, you can use an overarching system, such as Ocularis, which is made by On-Net Surveillance Systems Inc. of Pearl River, NY. Ocularis acquires and stores video surveillance data and enables you to manage it.

The system can accommodate any number of cameras, displays, and operators. Drag-and-drop technology enables access to virtually any video camera with no need to memorize camera codes and building sectors.

Open architecture permits the system to integrate video analytics systems. Wall monitors in the security center or remote monitors around the building can access the video at any time

By way of a software development kit, Ocularis can integrate information acquired and stored by various access-control systems.

360-Degree See-It-All Camera“The big problem with fixed cameras and pan-tilt-zoom cameras is that they’re never facing in the right direction when something happens,” Lander says.

Sentry 360 Security Inc. of Naperville, IL, makes a tiny, 360-degree camera – about the size of a computer mouse – that sees and records an entire 360-degree view from the ceiling or wall. Better yet, the high-resolution FullSight 360-degree camera can focus in on any particular scene it its field of view. It can knit several scenes together. It can manipulate the video in virtually any way required to enable security officers to see and understand situations.